Which Colour?
Press Play to start
Polish premiereTheatrical Screenings
Kinoteka 1
Online Availability
Additional Materials
Film description
As the first rays of light start peeking into the small room, the camera begins its slow, unintrusive observation. A woman is following her usual daily routine. Her daughter helps fold the laundry. The husband is planning a new rickshaw business. The kids are playing games on the busy street. It's time to pray. The believers from the Muslim district of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, are gathering among the rhythmic chants. Through this simple, everyday record, Shahrukhkhan Chavada manifests his protest against the systemic erasure. The current politics of Nahendra Modi's government does not recognize the presence of Muslims in the Indian society, removing them from the official picture.
Chavada's documentary method restores the minority's place in the society, offering a vision far from the violence or sensation present in the mainstream productions about Muslims. He creates a very particular aesthetics of the everyday, capturing the Indian "culture of waiting" through static shots and loops of repeating rituals. Chavada's protagonists, suspended in a disquieting moment of waiting, become the subjects of a silent, empathetic manifesto, a proof of the existence of a Muslim identity in modern India.
text:
Łukasz Mańkowski
Shahrukhkhan Chavada
Raised in northern Gujarat, in the Palanpur countryside in western India. Despite being pressured to become an engineer, he chose a career in cinema. He learned about it by watching films – from the Italian neorealism, through the French New Wave, to the masters from Iran. The biggest inspiration for his films came from Lav Diaz and Abbas Kiarostami. "Which Colour?" is his feature debut he focuses on the Gujarati Muslim minority.
2023 Jaki kolor? / Kayo kayo colour? / Which Colour?
